Lightning Man_ The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B. Morse - Kenneth Silverman [102]
Gouraud and Morse began attacking each other through lengthy letters to the editor, in what the press played up as the “Daguerreotype Controversy.” Gouraud evidently had taken a personal dislike to Morse, whose Christian-republican manner of dignified benevolence seemed to him (and to some others) an off putting combination of self-importance and obsequiousness. He portrayed Morse as an oily American Tartuffe, “a man of honied aspect, of such affectionate grasping of the hand, of such open and heavenly smiles.” Having learned about Charles Jackson’s quarrel with Morse, he accused Morse of trying to “appropriate to himself the fruits of the genius of his fellow citizens.” And now Morse was falsely claiming to have improved Daguerre’s process—“one more in his long list of self-illusions…. after having invented the Electric Telegraph.”
Gouraud portrayed Morse as not only hypocritical and larcenous but also vicious. Morse was representing him to Daguerre as a shady financial schemer, “IN ORDER TO RUIN ME IN THE MIND AND ESTIMATION OF THAT GREAT MAN!” As evidence he published a letter to him from a devoted Paris Daguerrian, Abel Rendu. It confirmed that Daguerre had received defamatory statements about Gouraud from Morse. Rendu speculated that in making Daguerre an honorary member of the N.A.D., Morse hoped to give his slanders against Gouraud greater effect, “and secure for them a more certain triumph.” Gouraud followed up by leaving a petition at the office of a French-language newspaper in New York, the Courier des États Unis, which he invited his sympathizers to sign. With its hundreds of signatures the petition would be forwarded to Daguerre in Paris: “We shall then see whether M. Daguerre will conceive himself to have been so highly honored by the reception of a diploma which makes him the colleague of Mr. Morse.”
Morse denounced Gouraud as an “unblushing falsifier,” and denied that he had ever written Daguerre, or anyone else in Europe, a single word about him. The Morse-friendly Journal of Commerce turned Gouraud’s charges inside out. It alleged that he had invented his story of persecution by Morse in order to rob him of Daguerre’s friendship and confidence: “A storm is thus raised which threatens for a moment to bear down a worthy citizen, who has made himself poor by his devotion to the Fine Arts.”
In the end Morse was vindicated. Rendu, a minor government official, resented Gouraud’s publication of his private letter. He wrote to Morse apologizing for having unwittingly been used to injure him. He explained that Gouraud had duped him into becoming an accomplice, and gave Morse permission to publish his apology. Later he revealed to Morse that although Gouraud identified himself as a “Docteur de Science” and professor at the Sorbonne he was neither.
Morse happened to meet Gouraud about a year after their public free-for-all. The Frenchman seemed to feel “deep regret.” Others had deceived him, he said, and being excitable he got carried away by his feelings. Morse promised to forget the affair and extended his hand. Gouraud remarked, “you are indeed a christian.” For his brother Sidney, Morse drew the appropriate lesson: “How cautious it is necessary to be with these foreigners!”
Morse’s photographic work did not keep him from closely watching political affairs, ever alert to threats against America’s “Protestant republicanism.” Calls for public support of New York Catholic schools particularly disturbed him. The matter affected some 70,000 German and Irish Catholics